Barry Larkin might never have played for the Reds if his college career had turned out like he'd envisioned.

The Silverton native was drafted by his hometown team in the second round out of Moeller High School, but Larkin opted instead to play his favorite sport, football, for the University of Michigan.

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But legendary Wolverines coach Bo Schembechler redshirted Larkin during his freshman year, which allowed him to focus on a baseball career that culminated Monday with his election to baseball's Hall of Fame.

"I had to grow up," Larkin said of his first year playing college baseball. "I remember being challenged for the first time, and not really liking it, but enjoying the battle of trying to step up to that challenge."

Larkin and the Wolverines played in the College World Series that season and the next, and he never played college football.

During a news conference Tuesday, following his election, Larkin recalled a fateful encounter during his first season as a college player, when Reds right fielder Dave Parker introduced him to Davey Concepcion, the team's shortstop at the time.

"Dave Parker, being from Cincinnati, parades me into the locker room, and my first interaction with the guy I idolized as a young kid, Dave Parker walks up to him and says, 'Hey, Davey, this guy's going to take your job,'" Larkin recalled. "Davey looked at my hands and saw all the callouses from working out and said, 'Nah, you're not going to take my job; your hands are too hard.'"

Three years after that meeting, after he was drafted fourth over all by the Reds, Larkin did eventually take over for Concepcion, whom he credits with teaching him to bounce throws on Riverfront Stadium's artificial turf and other tricks of the shortstop trade.

"He was so instrumental in helping me develop as a player," Larkin said.

Larkin credits many other former members of the "Big Red Machine," including his first manager, Pete Rose, with teaching him the right way to play the game.

He also credits Rose's successor with inspiring the 1990 Reds team that started the season in first place, never dropped to second place and won the World Series over the mighty Oakland A's.

Larkin said many players were unsure of Lou Piniella, a longtime American League player and manager, after they'd played under Rose, a Cincinnati native and face of the franchise who'd been banished for gambling on games.

"Lou Piniella's first day in spring training, he walks into the clubhouse and everybody's just kind of sitting there, kind of looking at each other, and he doesn't say much, just looks everybody up and down and says, 'I don't like losing. I don't accept losing. We're not going to lose,' and then he walked out," Larkin said, recalling that players were somewhat awed.

"That's not exactly the way he said it," Larkin said, referring to Piniella's penchant for profanity.

The Reds of the late 1980s had finished in second place in the National League West four times before slipping to fifth place in 1989, but many of the same players found a new level of intensity in 1990 as they took the league by storm.

"We went wire to wire that year, (and) he just set the tone, set the expectation, and it was really a special year," Larkin said.

By then, Larkin had become known as one of baseball's best shortstops, and the torch was passed from Concepcion and the St. Louis Cardinals' Ozzie Smith, who Larkin said each gave him signed gloves that he considers among his most treasured artifacts.

"These were two guys I idolized coming up, and I don't know if they had spoken to each other, but they both wrote on the gloves basically the same thing," Larkin said. "'Continue the legacy and pass on the tradition.' That, in a nutshell, for me, those are things that are important to me."